Ripping Yarns

I skived off work this afternoon and went to a workshop: How To Write Erotic Fiction.

It's pretty much exactly two years since I went on a writing workshop - the first one I'd been to since university. I determined to start taking my writing seriously - and started this blog to exercise my writing muscle.

Now I've been published twice in anthologies, done a number of readings, and feel able to introduce myself (in certain circles anyway) as a writer. This is where I was going.  This is where I am supposed to be.

Although I'm not entirely sure that erotic fiction is exactly the correct destination  -  it might be more of a fun diversion.  The woman running the workshop was called Mitzi (my porn-starlet name, how funny....), an American who writes mixed-genre fiction, including the erotic (and with a call out right now for submissions to her new anthology). 

She had some useful reflections on this kind of writing, and the differences between the horny (=good) and the porny (=bad).  I remain to be convinced about this distinction, as sometimes real life scenarios can be very exciting precisely because they are porny. Nonetheless, I did agree with her that a writer should be clear at the outset whether she is aiming for a two-handed or a one-handed read. So to speak.

Personally, I feel there's a time and a place for everything.

We had to do a couple of writing exercises, then read them to the group. Writing something erotic is one thing. Reading it out to a group of strangers in a genteel county-town hotel in the middle of the afternoon is another thing entirely. However I did not find it as embarrassing as I still do to read my poetry in front of friends. Isn't that strange?

I realised with both the exercises (one inspired by a postcard of an Egon Schiele painting, on a write-up of someone else's fantasy picked out of a hat) that I was taking longer than everyone else to get to the money-shot.  I am not sure whether that made it more exciting, with more of a sensual build-up, or whether that just made it rubbish.  I might write up what I wrote, and seek e-verdicts, what do you think? Horny? Porny? Or just dull dull dull?  I mean, obviously I've written about sexy stuff before, but is it sexy? And who gets to be the arbiter of that? (Now there's a job...)

I've got another workshop on Thursday, and a reading of my poems on Friday.  Some of the poems are quite sexy, but I've not had the chance to read many of these in public - it gets complicated. A genteel tearooms in the middle of the afternoon is not the place to start, either.